What Men Can Do – Taking Action to End Gendered Violence

While our sisters march at Take Back the Night, we invite men – adult men, young men and Trans men – to join us and discuss how we can support their effort to work toward a future with no violence against women. Men must answer an urgent call to action, as we can be allies, partners, role models to other men & engaged bystanders. Let’s talk about how we can be a part of change, with Urgency and with Love.

Jeff Perera is a Program Manager for the White Ribbon Campaign, the world’s largest effort to engage men and boys in working to end violence against women. Jeff speaks to people from all walks of life about how society’s unattainable concepts of masculinity are effecting men and boys and impacting women and girls.

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Within the workforce, Canadian women have fought their way to a much higher level of job market involvement over the past 50 years. With lots of hard work, many women have changed their economic situation and gained independence but we still have a long way to go in Canada.

Why are we so interested in women and the workforce when this blog is about demanding a world without violence?

Violence affects women-identified people in many ways, not only in a physical-sense. Even though we as women have made major strides in financial independence and education, within the workforce, women continue to face inequality and inequity within their jobs due to power imbalances, patriarchy and workplace politics!

Although things are certainly better than it was, it is still simply is NOT GOOD ENOUGH! We still have much further to go in order to experience liberation, empowerment, and fair treatment in the workforce.

The Canadian Labour Congress report “Women in the Workforce: Still a Long Way from Equality” illustrates the inequality and inequity quite well. Here is the link if you wish to check it out.

Here are some highlights:

– Women tend to be better educated than men and are deciding to have fewer children, however women continue to make less money than men, and the gendered wage gap has been growing since the 1980’s.

– Women without formal education and/or unrecognized credentials, recent immigrants and women of colour are more likely than the same populous of men to earn less than $12 per hour, which is not a sustainable living wage, especially to raise a family! Additionally, many such jobs are on a part-time or temporary basis within the private sector, which prevents very little if any, job security for women.

-Many women are in positions where they provide care to their children, their elderly parents, and sometimes, both. Women’s contribution to the unwaged workforce is epic. However, due to the vast economic changes that have taken place within the past 30 years, women are often required to provide the unpaid work of childcare, elder care, cooking and cleaning, in addition to working outside the home!

-Despite lobby groups pressuring the government for a public childcare, the only province in Canada to put this in place is Quebec. (Yay Quebec!) By creating a low-cost universal childcare policy along the lines of the European model, mothers will have more options and resources surrounding their ability to work outside the home and parent, with less burnout. (Choice is a beautiful thing!)

– When many jobs are part-time and temporary positions, women often have to juggle multiple jobs just to make ends meet, and when scheduling conflicts occur amongst the multiple roles and jobs women hold, employers can be insensitive and uncooperative to women’s needs. When this occurs, many women risk becoming labelled as a “difficult employee’s” or “hard to manage” and in many cases, are fired.

This is JUST A TINY SNAPSHOT of the many gendered power-imbalances in the workforce, which we, as women-identified people must fight against.

Many survivors of abuse stay with their abusers due to being financially dependent on their partner. When women achieve equitable and fair opportunities in the workforce, with a sustainable living wage, women are also gaining opportunities to live independently and free of abuse!

The Sexual Assault Centre of Hamilton and Area (SACHA) is a feminist organization that believes everyone has a human right to live without violence.

As volunteers working together on the Take Back The Night (TBTN) Blog, we work to enrich and support that belief. SACHA embodies and reflects many kinds of feminisms. Each of our readers, like each of our regular or guest writers, are different from one another. As such, each of our views, styles, and analyses will be different, too.

Here is a bit about each of us!

Amelia
Aside from a brief three month stint as a Guelphite in 2009, Amelia has lived, worked, organized, and grown up in Hamilton for the past eight years. She’s been a founding segment of the SACHA blog since its inception in 2011, and has also volunteered with SACHA’s TBTN and International Women’s Day events. Other local projects and groups with which she’s been involved have included the Hamilton Womyn’s Bike Collective, Hamilton CopWatch, Hamilton FlowCircus, Food Not Bombs Hamilton, OPIRG McMaster working groups, and MACGreen. She’s presented a wealth of workshops and composed materials for various endeavours, both as part of local working groups, and as an independent radical feminist.

Mandy
Mandy spent her first twenty-one years on a family farm in Haldimand County, but has since been living in this beautiful waterfall city since 2005, and has recently completed her Bachelor Degrees in Social Work and Sociology, from McMaster University! As she is now facing the realities of her daunting school debt, she works as a front line counselor at Interval House of Hamilton, which is an emergency shelter for women with and without children, escaping abuse. Mandy also recently took part in the “Hows the Weather?” campaign, which raised awareness about women’s homelessness in Hamilton, which continues to be a major problem. She is excited to be volunteering with the Take Back the Night committee, as she is passionate about working at both the micro and macro levels to end violence against women.

Likes: coffee (where would I be without you?!), kitties, kickboxing and feminist-folk!!!
Dislikes: centipedes (do they really need that many legs?!), FOX News (especially Bill O’Reilly) and of course, patriarchy and male privilege!!

Lisa
Lisa has lived in Hamilton for the past eight years. Before this she lived in Haldimand County, London and Guelph but none of these other places had her heart the way Hamilton does. Lisa has volunteered for Hamilton’s Take Back the Night Committee since 2006. This will be her first year as a contributor to the blog and she is excited about her new role.

Lisa enjoys feminist activism, laughter, snuggling with her pets, a warm cup of tea and a good book. She dislikes cabbage, muggy weather and oppressive people and structures.

Jen
Jen is an unabashed feminist killjoy who enjoys yelling loudly, dancing wildly, being a solid friend and stickin’ it to the patriarchy. Humour, with a sharp dose of indignation, is her favourite tool to wield in the struggle against oppression and injustice. She has occasionally been paid to sling drinks, sell stuff, cook foods, hang out with kids, help out profs, and support women-identified folks who have experienced violence. She is passionate about growing stuff, nighttime bike rides, stimulating conversation, and being weird.

Erin
Erin Crickett is a feminist who has been working in the gender justice movement for over ten years and proudly works at SACHA as a Public Educator. She is passionate about experiential education, buttons and photobooths. Crickett has worked as a community organizer, tall ship sailor, environmental educator, baker, temp worker, farm hand, crisis counsellor and facilitator with better results in some jobs than others…

Take, for example, the scenario where a friend sends you a naked picture of a girl he knows. Posing questions such as, Is it a big deal to share it with others?, the campaign aims to help people understand why it is important to draw the line on sexual violence, when to do so, and how to intervene safely and effectively.

Efforts are currently underway at a number of organizations across Ontario to expand the initial Draw the Line campaign. This includes outreach, translation of campaign posters and postcards into multiple languages, and the creation of new resources to address the range of sexual violence issues that exist in different communities (e.g., Aboriginal, elderly, ethno-cultural, immigrant & refugee, LGBT, women with disabilities).

At Newcomer Centre of Peel in Mississauga, outreach has targeted newcomer youth who take part in their Community Connections Youth programming. On May 10th, an event was organized around the above scenario, and allowed youth to contemplate whether or not it is a big deal to share a naked photo with others. This question sparked a two hour discussion that was facilitated by youth mentors, and that addressed issues such as consent, healthy vs. unhealthy relationships, online sexual harassment, and the possession and distribution of child pornography. Youth were also able to share and learn about ways that they could “draw the line” – for example, by deleting the photo and refusing to send it to others, calling a friend out, or reporting it to a trusted adult or authority figure.

Draw-the-Line campaign materials, including posters, post cards and a guidebook are available on the website free of charge.

Take Back the Night, an annual event organized by SACHA — Sexual Assault Centre (Hamilton & Area) — is a powerful opportunity for all woman-identified individuals to actively build connections, assertively reclaim our right to safety, and courageously stand up against violence.

Take Back the Night in Hamilton is happening on Thursday, September 12th at 6:30pm.

This year’s theme for Take Back the Night is Demand a World Without Violence.

We challenged SACHA’s volunteers and staff to let us know what it means to demand a world without violence:

Because it’s a basic human right that we are all entitled to!

No One Asks For It

Say NO to Austerity

Celebrate women’s work! (In all its forms.)

No religion. No the state. “I am the owner of my body and I make my own choices.”

Stop violence in your family and community! Free from violence. Live happily! Respect each other!!!! Free from viol

So women and children can walk and play in all spaces unafraid. All the time!!!

Apply a gender lens to all federal and provincial budgets.

BE CREATIVE! Come up with sexy, cuty, fun, exciting and respectful ways to ask for consent!

Let us know what you are doing to end violence! Download a PDF of the sheet that we’re holding (or just use whatever you have!), write your message, take a photo of you holding your message (or just your message) and send your picture to erin@sacha.ca. We will include your on our blog and Facebook page!

Take Back the Night, an annual event organized by SACHA — Sexual Assault Centre (Hamilton & Area) — is a powerful opportunity for all woman-identified individuals to actively build connections, assertively reclaim our right to safety, and courageously stand up against violence.

This year’s event will include puppets, information tables, Take Back the Night t-shirts and buttons, drumming, Zumba, laughter yoga, sign making, music, food, some surprises and, of course, a loud and empowered march! See you there!

When: Thursday, September 12th, 2013

6:30pm – We Gather
7:30pm – We Rally
8:00pm – We March

Where: Hamilton City Hall – 71 Main Street, Hamilton ON
Who: Women-Identified Folks and Children are welcome!

For more information or to request ASL interpretation, contact SACHA:
905.525.4573
sacha@sacha.cawww.sacha.ca

More information about the male-identified allies solidarity event coming soon!